On Ocracoke Island they still talk about pirates.
In fact, the first thing I saw as I got off the ferry that brought Bob Anthony and me across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke was a historical marker that read, “Lt. Robert Maynard – Of the Royal Navy. Sent by Gov. Spotswood of Virginia, in the sloop ‘Ranger,’ killed the pirate Blackbeard off shore, 1718.”
In his book, “Ocracokers,” Alton Ballance tells how some people still, erroneously, tie the island’s name to Blackbeard. “In the early morning hours before his fatal encounter with Lieutenant Robert Maynard, Blackbeard, anxious for the dawn to arrive, was supposed to have looked ashore near Ocracoke Village and bellowed ‘O Crow Cock! O Crow Cock!’”
Ballance was our host, and he let us join a group of public school teachers at a seminar sponsored by the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching. He told us a lot more about pirates, shipwrecks, fishing, hurricanes, currents, the restless movement of barrier islands, and the special accents and character of island people. He took us up and down the streets of the Ocracoke village, telling us who lived in every house and how the families have been intertwined for centuries. He showed us the island’s forests and the wide, shifting beaches, explaining how the fierce ocean leaves its mark on everything.
Ballance worried that the isolation of island life might limit the prospects of its residents, like the 77-year-old woman who, he said, never left the island, even for a day. Then, the next minute, he worried that the connections of modern times and the influx of new people might destroy the island life he obviously loves so much.
Twenty years ago, in “Ocracokers,” Ballance wrote what he still says today: “Even though parts of the old fishing village have made way for motels, restaurants, and shops, there are still remnants of the past: wooden, white-painted boats tied to stakes in the Creek; nets and other fishing gear cluttering front yards; and old people who watch a faster way of life, measuring its worth against days long past. And there are the children of the transition, myself included, who must balance the old ways and the new and go on living in the village beneath the lighthouse and the water tower.”
There was a part of me that wanted to stay on the island with Ballance and enjoy those remnants of island life while they still remain.
But it was time to go home.
On the ferry for the two and a half hour ride to the mainland, a crowd of lively teenagers joined us. They settled into their seats so quickly that you’d think they had been assigned. Out came the cards and the games began, a scrabble game at another table, books and study groups in the corners.
They were the Ocracoke Dolphins girls and boys basketball teams on their way to games against the Mattamuskeet High School.
The high school component of the Ocracoke School has only about 25 students. So most of them get to “make the team.”
We listened for the distinctive High Toide-Ocracoke brogue. We heard not a single hint of an accent from them. Only their coach had a touch of a seacoast accent. “I grew up in Baltimore, “ he explained.
Those basketball players have now been “off the island” many times. And there will probably never be another islander like the woman who never left for even a single day.
But we can ask, as Ballance meant for us to do, what is our own island and must we leave its protected shores to find the challenges that make a rewarding and useful life possible? Or can we find that life right where we are?
D.G. Martin is hosting his final season of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs at 5 p.m. Sundays. His blog and prior programs can be viewed at www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch. North Carolina Bookwatch takes a vacation during UNC-TV’s fundraising Festival.
